Toughie No 3460 by Osmosis
Hints and tips by Gazza
+ – + – + – + – + – + – + – +
BD Rating – Difficulty ***** – Enjoyment ****
Osmosis always gives us a proper Toughie with cunningly disguised definitions and clever wordplay. Today there are no anagrams and only the absence of K stops the puzzle from being a pangram. I enjoyed working through it – thanks to our setter.
Please leave a comment telling us how you fared and what you liked about the puzzle.
Across Clues
1a City detective in supermarket rejected graduates (5,5)
ADDIS ABABA: one of our usual CID officers goes inside the reversal of a UK supermarket. Finish with an arts graduate repeated.
6a Jerk front of wonky Hillman? (4)
WIMP: the first letter of wonky and an old Hillman car. I’m not convinced that the answer means the same as a jerk.
9a American who checks couple opening country pile nowadays with hesitation (10)
COPYREADER: the two letters at the start of country, a pile featuring in a funeral ceremony, the age we live in and an expression of hesitation.
10a Soft roll lacking that Italian zest (4)
BRIO: remove the Italian word for ‘that’ from a soft roll.
12a Language tattooist heard? (4)
INCA: a homophone of an informal word for a tattoo artist. I’m glad the question mark is there because the homophone doesn’t work at all for me.
13a Unique eagle perhaps, whopper, swirling (9)
NONPAREIL: what an eagle means on a golf course (3,3) and a whopper reversed.
15a Hairdo shorn of a tangled mass by Aussie thoroughly (4,1,2,1)
FROM A TO Z: assemble a hairdo without its leading A, a tangled mass (of hair, perhaps) and an informal adjective for Aussie.
16a Getting on stage in grisly masks (6)
AGEING: hidden.
18a Crackling and tripe stuffing poorly chopped (6)
STATIC: a word for tripe or rubbish is inserted in an adjective meaning poorly without its last letter.
20a Eccentric more than anyone always enriching pursuit (8)
QUEEREST: a poetic word meaning always goes inside a pursuit or quarry.
23a 1 Down supporter snacked, periodically missing mouth (9)
INSOLENCE: what supports a 1d in your foot and the even letters of ‘snacked’.
24a Bearing Hoover bags first in storeroom (4)
EAST: a verb to hoover or devour contains the first letter of storeroom.
26a Essentially honest, heroic, incendiary? (4)
NERO: the central letters of the middle two words in the clue make the name of the emperor who reputedly set fire to Rome.
27a Veins visible on this martial artist quite indecent (6,4)
DANISH BLUE: string together a person proficient in one of the martial arts, a suffix meaning quite or rather and a synonym of indecent or pornographic.
28a African rhino lustful, snubbed (4)
RANDY: rhino here is an old word for money. Drop the last letter of an adjective meaning lustful.
29a Fancied tryin’ out nearly all of canal section (10)
INTESTINAL: assemble an adjective meaning fancied or popular, a present participle meaning trying out without its G (as in the clue) and most of the word ‘all’.
Down Clues
1d Description of scamp, daily switching sides (4)
ARCH: a daily cleaner with the pairs of letters swapped round.
2d Graze leg during amorous activity in party (3,4)
DIP INTO: a Russian doll clue. An informal word for a leg goes inside an abbreviation for amorous activity and that’s all inside a festive party.
3d Drink a soldier consumes wrongly behind VIPs’ bar close to waterfront (12)
SARSAPARILLA: A and an airborne soldier contain an adverb meaning wrongly. Precede that with a synonym of VIPs without the closing letter of waterfront.
4d Buff cups on office tray? (8)
BRAINBOX: splice together a feminine garment consisting of two cups and a tray on a desk (or these days more often on a screen).
5d Henry maybe overwhelmed by British swimmer (6)
BLENNY: comedian Henry is preceded by an abbreviation for British.
7d Asian king’s lifted boring football team (7)
ISRAELI: reverse a Shakespearean king plus the ‘S inside the number of players in a football team.
8d Reckless for vessel to change direction (10)
PROFLIGATE: a prefix meaning ‘for’ and a warship with its ‘right’ changed to ‘left’.
11d Network influencer internally altered tea time biscuit (6,2,4)
LANGUE DE CHAT: rivet together a local network, an influencer or mentor with its middle letter changed, an informal word for tea and the physics abbreviation for time. Not a biscuit that I’d heard of but the wordplay is sympathetic.
14d Person delivering substandard wheel? (3,7)
OFF SPINNER: an adjective meaning substandard or unacceptable and a way of describing a wheel or anything that revolves.
17d Young Jamie’s outside locking kind of light business up (8)
JUVENILE: the outer letters of Jamie contain an abbreviated type of light and the reversal of business or profession.
19d Failure to boot? Server complication ultimately (4-3)
ALSO-RAN: a word meaning ‘to boot’ or ‘in addition’, the abbreviation for a senior officer in one of our military services and the ultimate letter of complication.
21d Character in Argos, another wearing Musk? (7)
EPSILON: Argos here is not the home of small pencils but a Greek city so we need a Greek letter. Another Greek letter is contained in the forename of the Musk who’s never out of the news these days.
22d Reported addict injecting here, wasted? (2,4)
IN VAIN: sounds like where a drug addict might inject himself.
25d Cork resident at seaside? (4)
SEAL: double definition, the second a sea creature.
The clues earning my ticks were 10a, 18a, 27a, 2d and 8d. Which one(s) did you like?
I managed most of this, but I needed to come here for the remaining few.
3d and 11d I never would have solved.
7d – I wasted far too much time trying to squeeze an x in somewhere (xi for eleven).
27a made me smile and gets my vote.
Many thanks to Osmosis – I very much enjoyed what I completed, and to Gazza for filling in the gaps.
Blimey that was tough.
Not happy with 12a as the solution is not a language, I think.
The fish in 5d is new to me as was the cat’s tongue biscuit in 11d.
All in all a proper Friday workout.
COTD was 3d, the solution to which was sold at a herbalists shop called Baldwin’s in Walworth Road in the 1960s.
My dad used to take me there and we’d knock it back at the bar to the back of the shop where they sold it draught in dimpled beer mugs. We loved it, as did the local West Indians with whom we’d socialise as if we were in a real pub.
Thanks for the memory, Osmosis, and to Gazza for untangling a couple of my iffy parsings.
Like you I wasn’t sure at first that 12a was a language but Mrs Bradford does list it in her list of languages.
Fair enough.
I did check to see if it was a language, and discovered the Incas native tongue was called Quechua or Runa simi, which is still used today.
Not that I want to put an idea into the head of any compilers who may be reading this…
This was a serious workout, completed either side of a riverside walk in the brilliant sunshine. Any unknowns were fairly clued, and it was a real pleasure to complete the grid. 3d was my favourite, for no good reason other than it is a great clue and a fantastic word.
How rude of me. I forgot to thank Osmosis and Gazza. Apologies.
Stared at this for a long time until 3a yielded, then it was a several sessions solve. Couldn’t see the Server to parse 19d so thanks Gazza for that. I’m not convinced about 6a either but I owned one of those wonky Hillmans before I had more sense. There were plenty of smiles here at Osmosis being Osmosis – is he teasing us by clustering ZJQX at the centre? Top clues for me were 9a [couple opening country] 8d [the change of direction] 11d [a tour de force] and my top pick 21d.
Thanks to Osmosis and again to Gazza.
Certainly a real challenge for us but with perseverance and a little e-help (for 11d for instance) we did get it all sorted. Quite a few ticks but we’ll go with 27a as favourite.
Thanks Osmosis and Gazza.